A Happy and Fun Home by Ann Pyne

Ann Pyne's design for her mother, Betty Sherrill.

Tour a happy and fun house designed by Ann Pyne of McMillen Inc. for her famous decorator mother, Betty Sherrill. Pyne updates the Southampton, New York house — formerly her brother's — by creating a glamorous bedroom and using bright, clear colors. Read more about the project.

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Jonny Valiant

Living Room

Ann Pyne's poodles, Louis Quatorze (reclining) and Marie Antoinette, are frequent visitors to the Southampton, New York, house of her mother, Betty Sherrill. They make themselves at home on the sofa — "and add to the French feel of the living room," Pyne says. "My mother and I spotted the '60s fiberglass coffee table by Alberto Bazzani on one of our jaunts down South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. She bought it for me, but now she won't give it up, despite the fact that all of her friends trip on its skirt. That vase is French, from the 1950s. We call it 'the Brain.'" Sofa fabric, Feria by Manuel Canovas for Cowtan & Tout.

"My mother's 'host of golden daffodils' on the mantel are from her planting of 50,000 — and counting — at her old house," Pyne says. Sofas are in the same fabric as the curtains, Rose Cumming's Lace. Painting by Jules Cavailles.

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Back-Hall Entry

A Victorian hat rack and ceramic stool from Sherrill's old house flank the back-hall entry to the living room. Wallpaper is New Vase by Clarence House.

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Foyer

In the foyer, a Raindrops mirror by C. Jere hangs over a vintage Edward Wormley shell console table.

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Dining Room

"The inspiration for the dining room was Eleanor McMillen Brown — my mother's mentor and the founder of McMillen, who died in 1991 at age 100 — and the small yellow dining room in her apartment on East 57th Street," Pyne says. "As Mrs. Brown's preferred look was chic and severe, I tried to achieve the effect in there. The trompe-l'oeil trellis on the walls and the diagonal squares on the floor were hand-painted by James Alan Smith, who often collaborates with me and is a friend of my mother's. She always complains to his face that his prices are too high. But I think it's a form of flirtation." A Marc Bankowsky plaster ceiling fixture from Maison Gerard hangs above a bronze table by Philip and Kelvin Laverne.

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Dining Room

One of the dining room's four statues representing the four seasons, cast from 1930s originals by Wheeler Williams that were in Eleanor McMillen Brown's dining room.

The "eye-popper" bed is a luxurious sea of pink satin — Cowtan & Tout's Salsa silk satin on the canopy sky, the headboard, and the coverlet. The bed curtains, valance, and skirt are in the same fabric as the curtains, Klotz by Country Swedish.

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Master Bedroom

The starting point for Sherrill's bedroom was the Zoffany wall fabric, Snow Blossom, from which the palette was drawn. She designed the mantel with her daughter — a bolection molding in steel around a marble panel. Numeros rug, Fedora Design.

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Guest Bedroom

"I originally thought the guest room should have a queen bed," Pyne says, "but I noticed that my mother's friends like to put their clothes and things — or their pet — on one bed, and themselves on the other!"

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Guest Bedroom

A Dora Frost painting above the postmodern Russian dresser in the "decorator" guest room is fittingly titled Elsie de Wolfe.

Another Dora Frost painting, titled 1951, found a home in the room because "it looked just like the curtains." Pyne created the console with heavy concrete bases — "something my mother will have a hard time switching out!"

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